The “rubber box” or did Laura Keene indeed held Lincoln’s head?

[Linda Anderson]

I came across this article in the May 5, 1897 Daily Argus News about Keene's granddaughter, Clara Jaccard, who died when she was just 20 years old. Clara was the child of Keene's daughter, Emma, and Emma's husband, artist A. L. Rawson.

"Death Is Like Life, Weird End of Hapless Mrs. Jaccard. The Granddaughter of Laura Keen [sic] the Actress, Died with her Newly Born Child on a Bed of Straw - Her Brief But Wild Life - Heredity Criminal Tendencies the Cause." (The headline implies that her newborn died with Clara but the New York Times notice from May 6 does not mention the child dying.)

According to the article, the "hereditary criminal tendencies" came from Clara Jaccard's father, A. L. Rawson, not her mother, Emma, Laura Keene's daughter.
"A constable stands guard over the body of Mrs. Clara M. Jaccard, at Hillsdale, N. J., pending an investigation to confirm or dismiss the authorities' suspicions that she was poisoned...When Mrs. Jaccard died, the cause assigned for her death was pleuro-pneumonia. Then the authorities remembered the circumstance that an unknown assailant shot at Mrs. Jaccard a month ago. A suit is pending against Artist Albert L. Rawson, father of the notorious Rawson twins [Clara Jaccard's brothers], now in jail for burglary, to remove him from the executorship of the fortune that his daughter would have inherited next May. A month ago Mrs. Jaccard had her stepmother, the third Mrs. Rawson, arrested on the charge of stealing articles left her by her grandmother, Laura Keene, the actress, who held the head of President Lincoln when he lay dying at Ford's Theater in Washington. The $25,000 which Mrs. Jaccard would soon have inherited was her part of the estate left by Laura Keene. Among the articles alleged to have been stolen was the famous "Lincoln" dress, the one worn by Laura Keene the night of the assassination, and which, it is said, still bears blood stains. When the Rawson twins were locked up in Hackensack jail for burglary, and their father was arrested and put under bond for having burglars' tools, Mrs. Rawson [Clara Jaccard's stepmother] was left alone. She gathered her things together and left town, going, it is said, to live with the queer sect, the Angel Dancers, on Lord's Farm."

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=23...955,146926

According to the the March 7, 1897 Boston Herald, Clara Jaccard would have inherited "half of the principal of a large trust fund." Laura Keene's daughter, Emma, bequeathed "'...all my jewelry, laces, furs, 'Lincoln dress,' pictures and furniture, to my said daughter, Clara May Rawson, the same to be and belong to her and her heirs absolutely and forever'...
"The 'Lincoln dress' referred to was the dress worn by Laura Keene in the play "Our American Cousin," the night President Lincoln was shot. It was described as a 'white silk gown, with colored figures,' and was said to have been stained by the martyred President's blood. It was regarded as a valuable historical relic, and the actress and her family had refused large sums offered them for it."